Solar PV - UK Domestic & Small Scale Solar Installations - Installed Costs.

So, you're interested in installing solar PV, but don't know what it's likely to cost?, or possibly already have received quotations and looking for a reliable source to validate whether it's likely to be competitive?, or maybe there's an interest in how prices have moved since your own install?, or even a need to conduct research into the renewable energy sector?.

Whatever the reason, there seems to be plenty of subjective information available regarding PV installation pricing in the UK, but very little in terms of an objective analysis, so what can be done to help address this.

On various internet forums & blogs, people provide details of their systems and what they cost at the time, however, prices for the technology have moved rapidly and any information available is normally based on individual installations or a very small sample set, so may be statistically irrelevant.

Since the UK Government introduced the Feed-in Tariff scheme to provide support and promote the uptake of small-scale PV installations and other renewable electricity generation technologies, an integral part of the scheme application & registration process has been the submission of proof of ownership of the installed equipment in the form of a copy of the installation invoice showing the owner's name and full address. This effectively means that once approved and entered onto both the MCS & CFR databases, the scheme operator (Ofgem) have access to a fully costed data source which covers the vast majority of domestic scale UK Solar PV installations.

In April 2014, DECC (Department for Energy & Climate Change) published a spreadsheet which summarised costs of installations over the previous financial year which has since been revised, extended and re-issued annually. The MS Excel format spreadsheet report, titled ' Solar PV cost data ', provides a substantial and authoritative source of data for current prices and trend analysis which is used to support various official Feed-in Tariff and Climate Change reports.

Example Analysis: Solar PV Cost Analysis April 2013 to March 2017- Systems to 4kWp

Utilising data available from the latest data tables (25/05/2017) we can analyse and assess Solar PV installation costs for all installation registered within the four financial years running from April 2013 through to March 2017. The following chart details installations per month and the average cost per kWp of installed capacity for registered systems below 4kWp and is based on a data subset sample size of 238556 registered systems.

The chart clearly shows the rate of system installation growth and the relative fall in costs prior to FiT scheme review changes taking effect on 15/01/2016, modifying both the scheme structure and applying major reductions to available tariffs. Following these scheme changes installation demand saw a dramatic reduction and an upward movement in average prices becomes apparent.

It must be noted that the above chart applies to installations rated below 4kWp and therefore the costs reflect a range of system sizes within a PV installation market segment which is heavily influenced by relatively poorly diluted cost elements such as inverters and scaffolding. It is therefore sensible to deduce that systems with an installed capacity close to 4kWp will cost less per kWp installed than the chart indicates.